Rudy Is Consistently Wrong

citing his own statistics. He says New York is the only city that has reduced crime every year since 1994, that New York had averaged 1800 or 1900 murders a year for 30 years, and that he brought spending down 7 percent.

All of these statements are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong. And while, to be sure, all candidates use misleading statistics from time to time, Mr. Giuliani has made statistics a central part of his candidacy as he campaigns on his record… New York averaged 1,514 murders a year during the three decades before Mr. Giuliani took office; it did not record more than 1,800 homicides until 1980. And Mr. Giuliani’s own memoir states that spending grew an average of 3.7 percent for most of his tenure; an aide said Mr. Giuliani had meant to say that he had proposed a 7 percent reduction in per capita spending during his time as mayor…Factcheck.org has reported that the Giuliani campaign exaggerated when it boasted on its Web site that “Mayor Giuliani increased the police force from 28,000 to 40,000,” noting that most of that increase came from his merger of the Transit and Housing Police Departments with the New York Police Department, a transfer of more than 7,000 existing officers to the department. [A] radio advertisement that Mr. Giuliani ran over the summer stated that as mayor he “turned a $2.3 billion deficit into a multibillion-dollar surplus.” That was also misleading. According to independent fiscal monitors, Mr. Giuliani did have to close a $2.3 billion deficit in his first budget, and did accumulate a multibillion-dollar surplus during his tenure. But by Mr. Giuliani’s last full fiscal year in office, the city was spending more than it was taking in in revenues, and Mr. Giuliani ended up spending almost all of the surplus to balance his final budget.

Here’s the spin: His aides say this is all nitpicking.

“The mayor likes detail, and uses it frequently on the campaign trail in ways the other candidates don’t,” said Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for Mr. Giuliani.

Yes…inaccurately.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.